Does anyone have any examples or success cases for implementing sustainable supply chains? Please see my recent interview with David Leifsson in Sweden who shared his success. See interview here.

David recently worked on a project involving a company which produces Coca Cola in Iceland. They were looking at what could be done to improve the environmental impact on logistics and also reduce costs. This was for an Icelandic customer and almost everything in Iceland needs to be imported. The main possibility of importing things to Iceland is by container vessel. In this case the suppliers were in Denmark and empty containers were picked up from the shipper in Denmark to drive it to the supplier where it was filled and sent back to the harbor for the destination in Iceland.

This process resulted in the creation of empty miles in the transportation in Europe. The focus of the EU is now to reduce the amount of empty miles. What David and his team did was find a trucking company in Denmark which had the openness to do something different, rather than the typical procedures usually done. They found a company with freight from the harbor to a place close to the supplier. This allowed them to utilize the empty space in the container and take it full to a warehouse or terminal close to the supplier for offloading. The next day they would take the empty container to the supplier for stuffing. Then they would take it back to the shipping company.

The two big things which this generated for the company in Iceland where:

1. Reduction in emissions by 40 tons per year since there no empty miles.

2. Since the transport company was using the empty space they could lower the price for transport, thereby reducing the total transport costs and giving a 30% reduction in annual transportation cost for this route.

Roughly 90% of Tremont Electric components are sourced from local companies, a decision that was made to help maintain a small carbon footprint. Even non-local suppliers were chosen with a required distance in mind to ensure the supply chain was small and manageable. Surprisingly, this decision has led to a lot of cost-savings, and actually made it easier for them to scale.